Category 5 hurricanes, political turmoil, TikTok conspiracy theories, fear of the future, raging hormones, racing thoughts, internal self-doubts, external pressure, and on and on the list goes. These can all combine to trigger a tsunami of fear that creates such angst that it overwhelms a teenager and spirals them into anxiety, depression, or even suicidal thoughts.
So how can teenagers find a way through?
The seven action steps I’m about to share don’t come from research. They come from a father who has raised two adult children, one of whom struggled with debilitating anxiety throughout middle school and high school. These steps helped our sweet Kailey—now a thriving young adult at Colorado Christian University—navigate a dark time of struggle during her teen years.
1. Go on prayer walks often.
From the time Kailey started struggling with anxiety in middle school, we often took prayer walks as a family. We’d choose a destination and then start walking. On the way there we talked about our lives and struggles. On the way back we prayed.
To this day, it’s a habit ingrained into our family rhythms. Prayer walking enables us to work out our struggles verbally (to each other) and then vertically (to God). These prayer walks didn’t just help Kailey and our son, Jeremy—they helped Mom and Dad, too.
They still do!
2. Read the Psalms consistently.
I love the Psalms. David, the person who wrote most of them, seemed to struggle with anxiety and fear, and he was ruthlessly honest with God about his struggles. The Psalms don’t hold back. David expressed his anger, frustration, confusion, and fear to God in bold prayers and heart-wrenching yet beautiful songs.
Reading the Psalms regularly gave Kailey someone to relate to personally in Scripture. And each Psalm pointed her back to God. God used—and is using—the 150 songs of Psalms in her life to keep her perspective riveted to eternal truths. They have given her the freedom to be raw and honest with God in her own prayer life.
3. Write music, poems, or a prayer journal.
Early on, my wife and I knew that our daughter had a gift for music, specifically singing and songwriting. We encouraged her to start writing songs and singing them back to God, like David did in the book of Psalms.
She’s now been doing this for years.
For her senior year capstone project, she put together an album on Spotify—along with the help of her uncle Adam—that expressed her struggles in song. The album is called “Stuck on Repeat,” which refers to her tendency toward overthinking and anxiety. But the lyrics, like the Psalms, keep taking the listener back to God as the answer.
Whether it’s writing music or poems or journaling your prayers, putting emotions into words can be a great way for anxious young people to express their struggles in life to God. There’s power in the wrestling.
4. Find a godly group of friends to confide in.
Kailey had what we used to call a “God Squad” that she hung out with. They’d pray together, have Bible studies together, and go out and share the Gospel together.
These girls kept one another accountable, shared their struggles, and prayed for one another. It tremendously helped Kailey on a spiritual and emotional level. As Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 reminds us:
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. … Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
5. See a counselor.
Some Christians rail against counseling, but I believe that the right counselor can truly help teenagers process their feelings and give them action steps to help them get healthy. It sure has helped our sweet daughter.
We are holistic people—we have a mind, body, spirit, soul, emotions, and more. And just like we go to a doctor when we’re sick physically, a good counselor can help us when we’re struggling emotionally.
6. Get enough sleep.
It’s interesting to me how much a good night’s sleep can help teenagers process their feelings. When teens stay up late scrolling, it not only takes them down a dark rabbit hole of “compare and despair,” but it also robs them of much-needed sleep.
That’s why we didn’t let our teenagers sleep with their devices in the room. It was a constant battle to make sure they went to bed early enough to get a full night’s sleep. Sometimes we won and sometimes we lost—but when we won, they felt better and more emotionally healthy the next day.
Sleep is good for the mind, body, and soul.
7. Play offense.
From square one, we as parents mobilized our kids to play offense. I’ve seen that when teenagers have a Gospel Advancing mission, it gets their eyes off of themselves and onto Christ and the harvest field of lost souls around them.
Being involved in outreach has helped our kids heal emotionally and grow spiritually. It’s a phenomenon I’ve nicknamed “healing as you take others to the hospital.”
There’s something cathartic about teenagers getting mobilized for evangelism. Every year my kids would participate with Dare 2 Share LIVE, where they would get inspired, trained, and mobilized to share their faith.
I challenge you to get your teenagers to participate in Dare 2 Share LIVE, which is a global day of youth evangelism. This free event is coming up on November 9. Talk to the youth leader at your church about hosting this event. Or you can do it from your living room with your teens and a group of their friends.
It’s time to play offense. Let’s get our teenagers off the bench and into the game. Let’s get their eyes off of themselves and onto the God-given mission before them to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
I believe these action steps will help your teenagers conquer their anxiety and refocus their minds on God’s purpose for their lives, giving them resilience and a sense of peace that goes beyond their present struggles.